Leather Britches: A Song History

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"Leather Britches" has its roots in a Scottish reel.[1][2] The Library of Congress links it to a tune printed in early collections as "Lord Macdonald's Reel" about 1795, and the Traditional Tune Archive notes that the reel was in Niel Gow's third collection of 1792, with the American tune closest to the second and fourth strains of the Scottish settings.[1][3] The folklorist Samuel Bayard observed that American fiddlers usually play the parts in the opposite order from the Scottish tune.[4] The American title is found in collections from Pennsylvania and West Virginia westward.[1] In Appalachia "leather britches" is also a name for green beans strung up and dried in the pod, and the tune's bowing has been likened to stitching with needle and thread.[1][4]

1939 photograph of an attentive audience in rows of seats at an old-time fiddlers' contest

“Audience at old-time fiddlers’ contest, Iowa State Fair, Des Moines, Iowa,” photograph, 1939. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The tune turns up early in American writing. An account of an 1840 wedding in Indiana describes an old fiddler playing "Leather Breeches" in a rather mournful style, and the historian Bell Wiley, in The Life of Johnny Reb, counted it among the fiddle tunes heard in Confederate camps.[4] It was a set "category tune" at an 1899 fiddle contest in Gallatin, Tennessee.[4] Early records include John Baltzell's 1923 Edison medley, which ends with it, the Leake County Revelers on Columbia in 1927, Doc Roberts on Gennett in 1928 and Uncle Jimmy Thompson on Vocalion in 1930.[4] The Library of Congress holds a version by Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia, recorded by Alan and Karen Singer Jabbour on June 18, 1966.[1]

Fiddlers treat it as a showpiece in G, drawn by its rolling arpeggios, and Reed's setting adds a third strain that restates the low strain an octave up.[1] It remains a fixture at fiddle contests.[1][4] In 1972 Bill Hicks heard a clear resemblance to it in Gaither Carlton's "Double File."[5] Mountain dulcimer players will find "Leather Britches" in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam II.[6]

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Sources

  1. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Leather Britches" (Henry Reed Collection).
  2. Library of Congress: "The Historical and Cultural Significance of Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Lord MacDonald (4)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Leather Britches".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Double File".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".